Tag: SB001

The Lambda coronavirus variant was first reported in Peru in December 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Repeated COVID-19 outbreaks in Australia have once again highlighted the need for rapid and widespread vaccination. We are extremely fortunate the global scientific community has been able to develop a handful of highly effective vaccines in such a short time.

Offshore wind farms are an increasingly common sight overseas. But Australia has neglected the technology, despite the ample wind gusts buffeting much of our coastline.

Global developments in tertiary education suggest the critical scientific study of religion is endangered.

Extreme floods this month have been crippling cities worldwide.

Different physical laws become dominant at the micro scale compared to what we’re acquainted to in our macro world. Water clings to surfaces, and resting bacteria get pushed around by the movement of water molecules.

A planet’s crust comprises a tiny fraction of its mass. But the Martian crust’s chemical and thermal interactions with the atmosphere, and with any water or ice present, helps set the conditions that determine whether life can exist there.

In 2010, the World Health Organization agreed the Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. This agreement encouraged source countries to hold onto their healthcare workforce by improving education, living standards and working conditions.

Concerns about inflation rates have risen as the UK economy begins its much-needed recovery from the effects of the pandemic. The Consumer Prices Index, the measure most commonly used to measure inflation, rose by 2.5% in June 2021, the highest level for three years.

In recent weeks, one piece of data has gotten a lot of attention: 99.5% of all the people dying from COVID-19 in the U.S. are unvaccinated.

The bulk of studies so far show there’s not enough evidence ivermectin is useful in treating or preventing COVID-19, either alone or with antibiotics or supplements.

Ahead of hosting the climate change summit in Scotland later this year, the UK government appears keen to demonstrate its green credentials.

Thanks to a roaring economy, plunging joblessness and a consumer spending spree, it probably won’t come as a surprise that the COVID-19 recession is officially over.

The Morrison government, confronted with a public service ill-prepared for big challenges and with no expertise in rolling out vaccines nationally, has contracted out many aspects of the COVID vaccine rollout to a range of for-profit companies.

In recent weeks, Japan has signalled a significant foreign policy shift that could have implications for security in the Asia-Pacific region.

The way that “The Currency” works is that collectors will not be buying the physical artwork immediately. Instead, they will pay US$2,000 (£1,458) for the NFT and then have a year to decide whether they want the digital or the physical version.

A surprising ruling from a top EU court means that the UK may be able to discriminate against EU nationals who have been granted the right to live and work in the UK after Brexit.

For the moment, the Met Office continues to use temperature alone to indicate an extreme heat warning, whereas relative humidity, wind speed and how much sun we get all influence extreme heat levels.

In 2020, election polls pointed to Democrat Joe Biden’s winning the presidency. But collectively, the polls underestimated backing for then-President Donald Trump no matter how close to the election the survey was conducted and regardless of the methods pollsters chose.

The ability to collect and learn from large amounts of data has been a major driver of innovation over recent decades. Everything from health care – think patient analytics, wearable devices and the COVID-19 response – to transportation – Uber and Lyft – to entertainment – Netflix – is now ...

The Australian National Audit Office told a parliamentary committee a list of the top 20 marginal electorates guided the distribution of a $389 million car park construction fund during the 2019 election campaign.

Another Olympics is upon us, inexorable even in the face of COVID. With it comes the inevitable, salacious speculation around doping scandals.

Today’s multi-country condemnation of cyber-attacks by Chinese state-sponsored agencies was a sign of increasing frustration at recent behaviour. But it also masks the real problem — international law isn’t strong or coherent enough to deal with this growing threat.

Recent disasters such as the Black Summer bushfires and the Juukan Gorge destruction highlighted the need to put Indigenous people at the centre of decision-making about Australia’s natural places.

Indium is used in many high-tech devices such as touch screens, smart phones, solar panels and smart windows, in the form of indium tin oxide. This compound is optically transparent and electrically conductive — the two crucial features required for touch screens to work.

In 2008, as big banks began failing across Wall Street and the housing and stock markets crashed, the nation saw how crucial financial regulation is for economic stability – and how quickly the consequences can cascade through the economy when regulators are asleep at the wheel.

England has now dispensed with the remaining restrictions that were in place to curb the spread of COVID-19. No longer will there be a blanket requirement to wear face masks in public spaces or to socially distance.

Many governments are increasingly approaching artificial intelligence with an almost religious zeal. By 2018 at least 22 countries around the world, and also the EU, had launched grand national strategies for making AI part of their business development, while many more had announced ethical frameworks for how it should be ...

The Tokyo Olympics will be novel in more ways than one. Aside from the challenges of mounting the games during a pandemic, there will also be a range of new sports competing for fans’ attention.

New South Wales recently announced it would trial different start and finish times for various year levels in primary schools.

Not wearing a mask looks a lot like punching the stranger – you risk harming innocent people. But lots of people who would never dream of punching strangers are seemingly planning to throw away their face masks.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in early 2020, one focus of international reporting has been the Chinese authorities’ handling of the story.

Satisfaction with Morrison’s handling of the pandemic – which now sees lockdowns in the nation’s two largest states – plunged nine points in the last three weeks to 52%.

While the climate is certainly a complex system that is difficult to predict with any certainty, the unfolding catastrophe is a sad reminder of just how inadequate early warning systems can be.

Opioids are one of the most powerful pain medications available, but millions of Americans have struggled with prescription opioid misuse after getting hooked on the feelings of calm and euphoria they also induce. But new research suggests there may be a way to chemically tailor opioids to reduce their addictive ...

Residents in Sydney, the NSW Central Coast, Blue Mountains and Wollongong today received confirmation their lockdown would be extended to at least 30 July.

Social distancing and lockdowns have disrupted university study for the past 18 months.

The decisions engineers make, if not fully thought through, can have unintended consequences – including building failures and climate change.

We all know action on climate change is urgently needed. But that doesn’t mean a forest should be razed to build a wind farm.

India is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its transition to a low-carbon economy is crucial to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. But unfortunately, the nation is still clinging firmly to coal.

Legacy pollutants like PCBs are chemical contaminants that take a long time to break down in the environment and often still cause harm to humans and wildlife many decades after they are banned.

Britain will be finally free of most of the restrictions placed on it during the pandemic from July 19 (and Northern Ireland from July 26). Armed with the knowledge that the majority of the adult population has been double-vaccinated, officials are removing almost all legal restrictions on social contact.

Exactly what happened at the beginning of the universe, 14 billion years ago, is one of the greatest mysteries in physics – there’s no simple way to probe it.

Earlier this year, militants stormed the coastal town of Palma, Mozambique, which lies close to vast plants for extracting liquefied natural gas (LNG). Dozens of people were killed and thousands more displaced.

In parts of the West, wildfire smoke now makes up nearly half the air pollution measured annually. A new study by the California Air Resources Board found another threat: high levels of lead and other metals turned up in smoke from the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of ...

Five years since the Brexit vote and three since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we’re now familiar with the role that targeted political advertising can play in fomenting polarisation. It was revealed in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica had used data harvested from 87 million Facebook profiles, without users’ consent, to help ...

India is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its transition to a low-carbon economy is crucial to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. But unfortunately, the nation is still clinging firmly to coal.

More vaccinated people are dying of COVID than unvaccinated people, according to a recent report from Public Health England (PHE). The report shows that 163 of the 257 people (63.4%) who died within 28 days of a positive COVID test between February 1 and June 21, had received at least ...

As sea level rises, it can be easy to miss the subtlety of higher water. It’s much harder to overlook saltwater more frequently flooding streets, impeding daily life and making existing problems worse.

Northern California has some of the strongest offshore winds in the U.S., with immense potential to produce clean energy. But it has a problem. Its continental shelf drops off quickly, making building traditional wind turbines directly on the seafloor costly if not impossible.